The Royal Artificery Society - OOC II: electric boogaloo

[DeTess]

Again? Sorry to hear that.

It's not so much 'again' as the same stuff that ahs been troubling me since september last year, it just gets better some times and worse other times, and this week is definitely worse.

[Prehysterical]

You take care of you. We are always happy to wait.

[DeTess]

@windstruck, I think we're mostly done for the day at the midnight guard offices?

@mrabdiel, what will you do next?

[WindStruck]

@windstruck, I think we're mostly done for the day at the midnight guard offices?

We probably are.

Not sure how far away MrAbdiel is on catching up in time with Aiden.. Shall I just have Shandara submit her report now? Maybe go to one of those famous publication offices?

[DeTess]

We probably are.

Not sure how far away MrAbdiel is on catching up in time with Aiden.. Shall I just have Shandara submit her report now? Maybe go to one of those famous publication offices?

Feel free to do so. If you want to go for some of the more famous publication offices, you know of the following:

• Arcane: this is the big one. Research regarding all matter of arcane matters is published here, but there is a high bar of entry. They are published every 6 months.
• Modern Enchantments: enchantment focussed magazine, nit as prestigious as Arcane and a lower bar for getting published. Published once every 3 months.
• Planar Report: similar to modern Enchantments but focussed more on planar research.
• Artifice inquirer: less prestigious than the previous 3, focussed more on making discoveries understandable and interesting for educated people outside the research community. Lower bar for entry though you'd need to rewrite portions of the report to fit their less formal style. Published biweekly.

[MrAbdiel]

@mrabdiel, what will you do next?

Wooo, I've just crawled out from under a pile of assessment and I am back to moderately normal freeness until... late september when there's the next wave!

Sorry for the delay. As for what I'm up to next, I believe delivering a rundown of the experimentation with the Tundra Oak (and informing Shandara that he has all but co-signed her to another job). I think I'm a couple of days ahead of Shandara's present timing, right? But after that, it's time to go home and bash out that harp and the scale model of the Legacy Tree.

[MrAbdiel]

Sorry for the quick copy+paste update:

This happened once before and you might remember it, but I have an annoying recurring issue with a disc in my neck that herniates and makes my life miserable. It's very bad for a couple of days and then pretty bad up and down for a few couple of weeks after that. I've been incapacitated for the first bit now I'm going through the next part again. It gives me numbness and pain in the right arm with escalates when I sit upright at my computer desk, so i have to budget my time sitting and typing and then laying down again. I started studying again this year so most of that slim budget has been going to work I have to do. I'm still keen and I'll be back but for the moment my posting will be infrequent at the very best. As a player i'm happy for my companions/GMs to puppet my character as required; as a storyteller I'm pretty much stuffed for the moment.

Sorry for the disruption, I'll be back at it when I can.

[DeTess]

Sorry for the quick copy+paste update:

This happened once before and you might remember it, but I have an annoying recurring issue with a disc in my neck that herniates and makes my life miserable. It's very bad for a couple of days and then pretty bad up and down for a few couple of weeks after that. I've been incapacitated for the first bit now I'm going through the next part again. It gives me numbness and pain in the right arm with escalates when I sit upright at my computer desk, so i have to budget my time sitting and typing and then laying down again. I started studying again this year so most of that slim budget has been going to work I have to do. I'm still keen and I'll be back but for the moment my posting will be infrequent at the very best. As a player i'm happy for my companions/GMs to puppet my character as required; as a storyteller I'm pretty much stuffed for the moment.

Sorry for the disruption, I'll be back at it when I can.

Oof, that sucks. I hope you get well soon!

[WindStruck]

Indeed!

My next post would involve Shandara going back to her home to twiddle her thumbs as she waited for Aiden to finish his experiments with the wood!

Now what am I going to do?

[WindStruck]

What would you like to do in the meantime, DeTess?

I was thinking, I could have Shandara craft some jewelry while she is waiting for Aiden to finish up and meet with her again. This will skip some more in-game time. But it will not solve the problem of players being absent.

It might be time for me to do stuff solo for a time. Perhaps Shandara might wander to the Grand Plaza and browse other jobs and opportunities? Or do you have something else in mind? Could maybe explore the thing with Shandara being spied on. Or something else. I think she still had that chunk of spirit wood at home, and the small experiments she did yielded some information.

edit: currently leaning toward furthering her wand research, but I'm up for anything really.

[DeTess]

The wand research sounds fine. If you want to, I can cook up a wand related commission.

[WindStruck]

Possibly, though I think Shandara still does having limitations, not being able to cast level 2 spells herself. I know you've been letting me enchant stuff at a higher level than she can cast, though. But it does tend to use outside help I think?

Could be a wand commission, could be her simply trying to figure out how to utilize the spirit wood.

But I think the important thing is, it's something that will occupy more of our time in the real world.

[DeTess]

@windstruck, the crown's gate guard precinct is located in the military district, not that far from the Ranger's guild. It is the headquarters of the city guard, and the divisions focussed on investigating crimes (rather than just patrolling and preventing crimes) are based there.

[WindStruck]

Okay. I guess the question is, should I just go now, or wait until the morning?

[DeTess]

Okay. I guess the question is, should I just go now, or wait until the morning?

That's up to you :P

[WindStruck]

I mean.. Shandara feels fine. It's still pretty early into her day.

[WindStruck]

I've been trying to search back in our threads from over a year ago.

How much was Shandara paying for that contract with the Midnight Guard?

And how much was that stipend she gets? Wasn't it something like 50 gp a week?

I really need to write this stuff down on my sheet...

Right now I'm going to spitball a price of 20 gp/day. 15 gp/day is apparently the usual price for the services of a Sage, somewhere in all the pathfinder goods and services pages.

So essentially, I'd think the going rate for her services would be a bit higher than that.

[DeTess]

stipend is 50 gp/week. your contract with the midnight guard is 300 gp/month.

[DeTess]

@windstruck, please roll me an appraise check with a +10 competency bonus.

[WindStruck]

Appraise: (1d20+11)[16]
oops, +10 to that, so 26 total

And I think I need more text in my post...

So I'll say this! Thanks for coming up with a little solo plot for me. I hope the others are doing well and can return soon.

[WindStruck]

Interesting. I'll also try Spellcraft to see if I can gain any insight into how the spell might work?

(1d20+16)[27]

[DeTess]

I've edited the IC spot slightly to better fit the explanation.

The spell doesn't do anything with the object you are trying to read. Instead, it enchants the user, for a moment improving their perceptive abilities and mental capacity and and grants them an intuitive understanding of a skill they normally wouldn't have. It's not entirely clear to Shandara why the spell improving the mental abilities that it does results in her being able to read these images form the object, though it does suggest it is possible to learn how to do this without magic.

[DeTess]

@windstruck, how versed would you say Shandara currently is in the field of Divination? The books you have are very advanced, but not unique. Copies of those works can be found in the artificery archives.

[WindStruck]

Well she is a generalist wizard... I wouldn't say she's more versed in divination than she would be in abjuration, conjuration, or some other spell school. But Shandara should be fairly gifted, regardless. Based on what you're telling me about the books, I would imagine that Shandara should be able to understand them, more or less.

[DeTess]

As far as I could find in my notes I never established a proper year number. If I did, do please point out where I did and I'll update the current post to match what I had already established.

For reference towards the given date, assuming I didn't establish anything else, it would currently be the 1041th year on the calendar.

[DeTess]

@windstruck, the wall seems to have an aura of illusion magic to it. I wonder why :P (technically that requires a roll to figure out I think, but it seems given context clues you'd figure this out pretty quickly).

[WindStruck]

That's fine. I wasn't very concerned about the wall.

I was just having Shandara cast detect magic prior to entering the room, to aid with observing whatever Whitecliff wants to demonstrate. Also, I may be keeping the spell up to be observing other things...

(I'm interested in magic auras on other persons)

[WindStruck]

whitecliff's aura, arcana: (1d20+17)[27]

spellcraft divination: (1d20+16)[30]

spellcraft illusion: (1d20+16)[25]

[DeTess]

On Whitecliff's aura, it is like nothing you've ever seen. it has some similarities to the aura elft by a divination effect, but it is less neatly structured, wilder, more 'primal' if you will. It also seems to be something coming from Whitecliff himself, rather than something that was cast on him.

The divination spell is pretty complicated. Two simultaneous effects analyze both targets for a massive amount of information (you couldn't really figure out what exactly based on a single viewing, but you get teh feeling it's not far short of everything. Certainly far too much information for a human to process themselves), then the two sets are compared, and if some amount of similarity is reached, one of the samples (in this case the vial of blood) will light up for a short while.

The illusion spell was silent image.

[Prehysterical]

So, yeah... It's been almost a whole month. I didn't mean to fall off the face of the Earth, but things kept competing for my attention like grant writing and coming to terms with the realization that I might need to move out-of-state again to be closer to my mother. That's not to say that I have had no time, but it has sapped me of my enthusiasm for writing (as you can see from my history log).

I'm trying to get back into things. Here is an Appraisal check for what Bolten would consider a fair price for the Imperial Records and Customs Office: (1d20+12)[13]

How fitting...